In 1928, Pan American World Airways started mail flights from Miami to Paramaribo, the capital of the then Dutch colony Suriname.

On 16 April 1934, female aviator Laura Ingalls landed in a single engine airplane, the Lockheed Air Express at Zanderij in the first solo flight around South America in a landplane.

The KLM tri-motor Fokker F.XVIII, named the Snip (Snipe), made a trans-atlantic crossing from Amsterdam via Paramaribo to Curaçao, carrying mail.

[4] The Snip landed at Zanderij Field on 20 December 1934, after a first trans-Atlantic crossing of 3600 km, dubbed "the Christmas Mail-flight", directly from Porto Praia.

In January 1937 William Henry Vanderbilt III landed in a baby Clipper Sikorsky S-38 at Zanderij with wife and friends The Flying Hutchinsons.

In 1938, the KLM started a weekly service between Paramaribo and Willemstad (Curaçao) with a twin engined Lockheed L-14 Super Electra able to carry 12 passengers and named MEEUW (PJ-AIM).

[9] On 11 May 1939, The Flying Hutchinsons arrived at Zanderij in a twin engine Lockheed Electra, on their "family round-the-world global nations flight", which was broadcast on a radio series sponsored by Pepsi Cola.

The first American armed forces arrived at the airport on 30 November 1941, and expanded the facilities to be a transport base for sending Lend-Lease supplies to England via air routes across the South Atlantic Ocean.

On 2 October 1942, a B-18A, piloted by Captain Howard Burhanna Jr. of the 99th Bomb Squadron, depth charged and sank the German submarine U-512 north of Cayenne, French Guiana.

[13] The intensive flying of the first two months of the war soon took its toll, however, and by the end of February 1942, the Squadron was forced to report that it had but three B-18As operational at Zandery and that " ... none of them are airworthy at this time."

She landed at Zanderij in a KLM Lockheed Model 14 Super Electra PJ-AIM Meeuw as the first ever member of the Dutch royal family to visit Suriname.

After the landing of the Meeuw and escorting Dutch and US military planes, the Royal Princess was welcomed by Governor Kielstra and inspected the guard of honour.

It was closed as a military facility on 30 April 1946, and on 22 October 1947, the Zandery Air Force Base was turned over to Dutch authorities which returned it to a civil airport.

In June 1959, pilots and missionaries Robert Price and Eugene Friesen arrived at Zandery with a single engine plane during Operation Grasshopper.

[16][17][18] The airport is officially named after the popular Surinamese politician and former Prime Minister of Suriname, Johan Adolf Pengel, but is locally still called Zanderij.

The total investment involves an amount of approximately US$205 million, and approval for the loan agreement was to be put forward to the National Assembly (DNA) of the Surinamese government by airport management mid-2019.

The following airlines operate regular scheduled and charter flights to and from Paramaribo: Media related to Johan Adolf Pengel International Airport at Wikimedia Commons